Discussions around equality and funding at AUMA

Municipal leaders from across the province spent the last few days in Edmonton for the annual Alberta Urban Municipalities Association convention.

Funding was the major topic of conversation, even after premier Rachel Notley told the convention there wouldn’t be funding because of the provincial economy.

President of the AUMA Lisa Holmes tells the Alberta Morning News the membership doesn’t accept that.

“We’re talking about infrastructure, so making sure Albertans have clean drinking water, have safe roads to drive on, and those things are going to happen no matter what the economy is like.”

Notley told the conference money will be going toward health and education needs, anything else is not on their list of priorities at this time.

Also a big topic was equality in local government. Holmes said they had a conversation with Municipal Affairs minister Danielle Larivee about how to get more women involved.

“We’re seeing in the cities of Edmonton and Calgary they have a 16 to 17 per cent ratio of women to male councillors,” she said. “It would be important to increase the participation in cities.”

When talking about equality in government, Holmes said it’s important to remember that it’s not just women who are underrepresented.

“We should also have all ages represented, and we should look at anyone who is under represented in regards to race, ethnicity, new Canadians,” she said. “We’re just trying to spearhead that conversation with the municipal elections coming up in 2017.”